Western Digital keeps it traditional with new, giant mechanical drives

By Jon Martindale August 18, 2015

western digital black 5tb red pro wdharddrives — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Proving that there is still life in the old dog yet, Western Digital has released a new line of storage devices that use traditional spinning platter discs. Their capacity is not retro, however, as these new Black and Red Pro hard drives come equipped with a fair chunk of space on board — both now have 5TB and 6TB options for consumers.

While there are certainly large SSDs available with multi-terabyte configurations, you aren’t going to find ones of this size at anywhere near the cost just yet, which is why hard drives are still a necessary evil for those requiring a massive amount of storage space. Western Digital knows this, but has made sure that these drives are far from slow, so there isn’t such a drop-off in performance from your boot to storage drive.

The Red Pro range of network attached storage (NAS) focused drives are said to operate as fast as 214Mbps thanks to a 128MB cache. While we’re not told how fast the Black drives operate, we are told that they perform as much as 29 percent faster than the 4TB predecessor in the same range.

The Black drives are able to make use of StableTrac Technology for increased reliability, while cutting back on potential damage to the disc from shock and vibration. They also come with a five-year limited warranty, making it a safe bet that those drives are constructed to last a while.

Comparably, the Red Pro series of new high-capacity hard drives supports NASware 3.0 for better data protection and enhanced performance when operating as part of a NAS device. These hard drives come with a three-year limited warranty as standard, though a longer five-year warranty can be purchased separately.

The WD Black drives cost $265 for the smaller 5TB model, while the larger 6TB will set you back $295. The Red Pro series is a little more expensive, with its models priced at $270 and $300, respectively.

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